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Or in other words.

I don't think we can compete with Ubuntu so I'll chuck a bit of mud about in the hope it might stop some from trying it out.
After all, wouldn't you be happier paying?
Anyone?
Please?
How come it works for Microsoft?

(brought to you by the "we lost our way after buying Connectiva" dept')

They lost their way, a good bit before Connectiva, i used Mandrake from version 6 through to 8.
At this point quality control went down the pan on version 9, then they introduced the delay in access to the free version i gave up on them at this point and went back to Slackware as my server distro.

I do use PCLinuxOS on the desktop which is based on Mandriva but is up to date, free, easy to use, all in all texstar and team have done a great job on it, this is the distro i give to my mates now.

Mandriva is a for profit company and as such needs to make money, at this point they lost my trust, them dissing the free competition just enforces my opinion in my distrust and my obviously correct decision on dumping of them.

Quoting:Mandriva is a for profit company and as such needs to make money, at this point they lost my trust, them dissing the free competition just enforces my opinion in my distrust and my obviously correct decision on dumping of them.

And that's the part that is so awful about this.

None of us should distrust a organization just because they choose to make money doing what they do. We've seen for-profit companies that have treated the community at large well. Red Hat comes to mind. But then, a player like François comes along and reinforces our beliefs that for-profit companies are in some way inherently bad.

One Mandriva makes it that much more difficult for a number of Red Hats. Who knows, maybe that just a happy side-effect for the Mandrivas.

The commercial bias has merit and I tend to agree with it. Linux projects that benefit the enterprise side of a free software house should be distributed with no strings attached. The economic benefits to the company allow them to "sell" stable solutions.

Red Hat made a big mistake and has admitted it when they chased off all their community package maintainers. Novell realized the value of having a community. Free software without a robust community makes no sense.

Mandrake had a great deal when they booted up their company because they had an exclusive distributor for north America - Macmillan Publishers - who paid them a set amount annually. That allowed them to expand other areas of their business.

Ubuntu seems like a distribution being rolled out the correct way. Develop a robust community; perfect your product; create a channel of commercial resellers and ISVs; and then go for the high-end enterprise users, etc.

If VC's approached the market the way Ubuntu has, they'd get back more return on their investments. But they are short sighted and don't have the patience and planning Mark Shuttleworth has.